1-7 Star Rating – Page 28 – Public Intelligence Blog

2016/05/052016/05/04

Review: The Art of Shaping the Metropolis

6 Star Top 10%, Atlases & State of the World, Best Practices in Management, Budget Process & Politics, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Country/Regional, Future, Leadership, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Politics, Power (Pathologies & Utilization), Public Administration, Stabilization & Reconstruction, Values, Ethics, Sustainable Evolution

Pedro B. Ortiz

6-Star Guide to Saving Every City in Every Country — a World-Changing Book

This is an extraordinary book, easily five stars but I am elevating it to 6 stars (my top ten percent across over 2000 reviews, all but a handful non-fiction) because the author is not just a genius, but he explains his deep multi-level knowledge brilliantly. I have never seen a collection of complicated nuanced topics presented in such a compelling, easy to understand, well-illustrated manner. The case studies abound. The publisher is to be complemented for the purity of the presentation — a stunning book with perfectly laid out pages, glossy color on every page, and a superb index, which is where most publishers fail their authors.

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2016/04/302016/04/29

Worth a Look: The Void Generation: How A Generation of Void Restraining Orders Voided the Lives of a Generation

5 Star, Justice (Failure, Reform)

The Void Generation is a highly readable account of a series of publishing mistakes by the Judicial Council of California between 1999 and 2007 that resulted in the publication of thirteen (13) constitutionally and statutorily void restraining order forms, which the Judicial Council refused to correct until long after the forms were published. With no valid forms available for them to use, the courts were compelled to issue all of their restraining orders on void and unenforceable forms. The public record suggests these void forms may have caused the false arrest and imprisonment of thousands of presumably innocent respondents-without a warning notice or a prior hearing.

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2016/04/212016/05/05

Review: Connectography: Mapping the Future of Global Civilization

6 Star Top 10%, Atlases & State of the World, Change & Innovation, Complexity & Resilience, Future, Information Operations, Information Society, Nature, Diet, Memetics, Design, Peace, Poverty, & Middle Class, Water, Energy, Oil, Scarcity

6-Star Utterly Brilliant Survey and Strategy, April 19, 2016

The author of this book has done something no one else has done – I say this as the reviewer of over 2,000 non-fiction books at Amazon across 98 categories. For the first time, in one book, we have a very clear map of what is happening where in the way of economic and social development; a startlingly diplomatic but no less crushing indictment of nation-state and militaries; and a truly inspiring game plan for what we should all be demanding from countries, cities, commonwealths, communities, and companies, in the way of future investments guided by a strategy for creating a prosperous world at peace.

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2016/04/162016/05/04

Worth a Look: Sufis, Salafis and Islamists – The Contested Ground of British Islamic Activism

5 Star, Religion & Politics of Religion

NEW: 30% discount at publisher, enter code AN2

NEW: graphic below on four threads of Islam.

Sufis, Salafis and Islamists: The Contested Ground of British Islamic Activism

The Arabic terms Islamism, Salafism, Jihadism and Wahhabism have acquired currency in the English language and are synonymous with violent Muslim extremism. But what do they actually mean? Why does Muslim religious conservatism and radicalisation appear to be on the increase? What long term impact could they have on Western societies? In this unique, ground breaking book – British Muslim academic Sadek Hamid evaluates the impact of three globally influential religious paradigms by using the UK as a case study. He devotes a chapter to each of the four faces of faith-based activism: reformist Islamist, radical pan-Islamist, Salafi and neo-Sufi by tracing their intellectual genealogies and explaining how these trends migrated, evolved and integrated into British society.

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2016/04/082016/04/06

Worth a Look: The Water, Food, Energy, and Climate Nexus

5 Star, Environment (Problems), Environment (Solutions)

Global trends of population growth, rising living standards and the rapidly increasing urbanized world are increasing the demand on water, food and energy. Added to this is the growing threat of climate change which will have huge impacts on water and food availability. It is increasingly clear that there is no place in an interlinked world for isolated solutions aimed at just one sector. In recent years the “nexus” has emerged as a powerful concept to capture these inter-linkages of resources and is now a key feature of policy-making.

This book is one of the first to provide a broad overview of both the science behind the nexus and the implications for policies and sustainable development. It brings together contributions by leading intergovernmental and governmental officials, industry, scientists and other stakeholder thinkers who are working to develop the approaches to the Nexus of water-food-energy and climate. It represents a major synthesis and state-of-the-art assessment of the Nexus by major players, in light of the adoption by the United Nations of the new Sustainable Development Goals and Targets in 2015.

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2016/04/052016/04/02

Pre-Order: General Mike Flynn on The Field of Fight – How We Can Win the Global War Against Radical Islam and Its Allies

5 Star, America (Anti-America), Insurgency & Revolution, Intelligence (Government/Secret), Military & Pentagon Power, Misinformation & Propaganda, Politics, Terrorism & Jihad, Threats (Emerging & Perennial), War & Face of Battle

TO BE RELEASED 12 JULY 2016

PRE-ORDER NOW — Appears Discounted

Ten years ago we found evidence that al-Qaeda was far more organized and adept than we had previously given them credit for. It took us nearly that long to locate and execute their leader, Osama bin Laden, and we are far from finished. Al-Qaeda has morphed into a much more dangerous, menacing threat: ISIS. A war is being waged against us by radical Islamists, and, as current events demonstrate, they are only getting stronger. This book aims to inform the American people of the grave danger we face―and will continue to face―until our government takes decisive action against the terrorists that want nothing more than to destroy us and our way of life.

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2016/02/012016/01/30

Review: Hacker Hoaxer Whistleblower Spy – The Many Faces of Anonymous

4 Star, Democracy, Information Operations, Information Society, Information Technology, Intelligence (Wealth of Networks)

Gabriella Coleman

The Immune System of Democracy

By David Wineberg TOP 500 REVIEWER on November 4, 2014

Anonymous is almost certainly not what you think it is. You have to live it to understand it, its implications, its functioning, and its place in society. Gabrielle Coleman lived it, as a fully disclosed academic anthropologist. This is her story as much as theirs.

The structure of Anonymous is like the structure of the internet: multiple channels, multiple entry points, self healing patches, and lots of redundancy. (Also lots of swearing, lots of personal attacks, and lots of suspicions. Testosterone is involved.) This enables a totally flat organization to achieve in minutes what giant corporations and government take years to effect. The exhilaration, the joy, the satisfaction participants savor is incomparable. Anonymous is far more than a labor of love; it is idealists executing on their dreams. Everyone should be jealous.

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